Music Never Lets Me Down

“Think about the alternative: another crime drama, another hospital drama,” Mr. Farella said. “We like things that are different, so we can sit in front of clients and say, ‘Let me tell you what I’m doing differently this year than last year.’ ”  - an advertising exec, discussing how putting Jay Leno on at 10 pm on weeknights is “different”

How does moving a guy who has been on the same late night TV show for 17 years up by one hour earn you the right to claim that you’re doing something “differently?”

That’s like me saying, “I’m re-releasing a record I’ve already made, but I’m putting the tracks in a different order, so it’s a totally different experience.”

Dan and Kathryn are having a party this weekend at Barnaby’s in an effort to do some good in this world.  Go there.

Additional info can be found here and here.

And because you’re being so good, I’ll post this bedroom version of a song I’m working on that’s going to be awesome.

Do-goodering, Barnaby’s, Phillies, and the overwhelming anticipation for my next record.  What more could you ask for?

I’ve been around a lot of panic recently.  Many people seem eager, almost glad, to be whipped into a frenzy, nervous about anything that may go wrong, might become a problem.  Whatever these people don’t know immediately, they fear, and the resultant emotional state is panic.

I have decided, for my own life, that panic simply won’t do.  It’s an exremely unpleasant state, and I’m not convinced you get anything accomplished that you couldn’t do in a calm and relaxed state.   I have heard the argument that panicking illustrates that you care, and that others will appreciate the amount of seriousness you exhibit when an important task or problem presents itself.

However, I reject this notion.  Only an emotionally needy person would demand that others react to situations in this way, would insist that a level of suffering is necessary to appreciate the urgency of something.

So,that said, I am going to establish the rules for the Legitimate Reasons to Panic:

1) You or a loved one is facing imminent and immediate death or injury, and the cause of this physical harm is something that you can trace to a concrete physical threat within a five-mile radius and can predict that the harm will occur at a time within the next 48 hours.  This includes car crashes, psycho killers, stampedes, fires, natural disasters, a gun being pointed at you, etc.  Notice how long-term illnesses with vague expiration dates are not included in this item.

2) You or your household’s livelihood is taken away unexpectedly and the lack of purchasing power presents such drastic immediate difficulties so as to potentially bring about #1 (inability to buy food causing starvation, inability to afford home leads to homelessness, etc.).

3) Your child or a relatively defenseless person in your care is lost or has been taken away unexpectedly.  While #1 in this situation is not assured, the missing person’s inability to defend himself from whatever ills are out there makes the situation particularly dire, and the unknown nature of the threat combined with the fact that the potential victim does not have the resources to combat most assailants, justifies panic.

And really, I think all situations can either be reduced to one of these three scenarios or is otherwise not panic-worthy.

Things that are not panic-worthy (so long as they don’t lead to any of the above):

Loss of money, embarrassment, missing a plane, difficulties at work, the notion that you might be sick when you don’t have an official diagnosis from a medical professional, getting lost, feeling overwhelmed, etc.  All of these things can be overcome or at least endured if you take a deep breath and remember that you are not experiencing #1, #2, or #3.

So lighten up, everybody (myself included), life isn’t so bad.

I have stumbled upon a trade for the Sixers that I think works for all parties involved and helps with the Sixers’ dreadful 3-point shooting problem.  Please see the below image which I yanked from ESPN’s trade machine:

Somebody, somehow, please inform the front offices of Philadelphia, Chicago, Charlotte, and Minnesota that this trade is something that would help all of them.

As a long-suffering Philadelphia 76ers fan (bordering on perhaps delusional), I believe that this team is a player or two away from making some playoff noise, and those two players needn’t be marquee stars - they just need to be able to space the floor and improve the 76ers’ league-worst 3-point shooting.  This trade does that, and gives other teams some things they need in the process.

Minnesota: They have already put Randy Foye at SG and have poor Al Jefferson and some corpses playing C.  This will give them a true center and allow big Al to work at his natural position at PF.  The problem will be the glut of forwards that remain (Carney, Brewer, Love, Smith, Madsen, Cardinal, Love, Gomes), but they have that problem anyway with or without this trade, and this doesn’t ADD to the problem (it should definitely help Jefferson play more in-position).

Charlotte: A paper swap.  Coach Larry Brown hates Sean May anyway, and while Rashad McCants is terrible, he costs less than May and also comes off the books at the end of this season.  Get May out of the locker room now, play McCants (or not) in a backup position and save about $40k in these troubling financial times.

Chicago: Everybody knows they have too many guards in Chicago, and that Gordon is very likely going to walk at the end of this season.  So, might as well invest time in what you’re likely going to have to work with (Rose, Hinrich, Sefolosha, and Hughes), rent May’s giant body for the 2nd half of the season so you can have an extra big, and have a willing reserve in place in Willie Green to ride the bench while you develop the four more talented guys.  Admittedly, this is the least attractive aspect of the trade for any of the teams in this proposal, but Chicago can’t keep playing a five-player guard rotation for players who all think they deserve starters’ minutes.  Philadelphia probably could/should throw in its first-round draft pick here as well to sweeten the deal.  (UPDATE: I just read on TrueHoop that Larry Hughes wants to be traded.  This is actually perfect.  Why?  Because the Bulls need to showcase him to get some team to bite at a trade and take on his massive contract, and will have a plausible excuse to do so if BG is out of the picture).

Philadelphia: This is the no-brainer part of the equation.  You’re trading size for perimeter shooting, which I’m okay with - Brand trailing the break is a much better option than trying to keep up with it, and Dalembert, while a fine player, is not so invaluable that Philly couldn’t cope with playing a little small.  After this trade, the Sixers’ stable of bigs would feature the soon-to-return Elton Brand (sliding into the starting center position) backed up by a core of bigs consisting of Young, Speights, Evans, Marshall, and Ratliff.  Not a dream team, but not total chopped liver either; they could totally manage with that crew.  And then as far as perimeter shooting, Gordon and Mike Miller are obviously two of the players most capable of hitting the long-ball on teams that are very likely willing to part with them.

We have so much talent on the floor but we’re crippling it by asking our players to fill roles that they shouldn’t be asked to fill - keep Andre Miller at PG, start Gordon at the SG, move Iggy back to the SF (where he belongs), move Thad back to PF (he’s undersized but overquicked and did well here last year), and Brand at C (which would free him up to work inside and remove the obstacle that is the giant Dalembert).  That will give you a very strong bench of Mike Miller, Lou Williams, Maresse Speights, and Reggie Evans, for a much more solid 9-man rotation.  Just like Phoenix in its golden days had its “Seven-Starter” lineup (with Diaw and Barbosa the honorary “starters”), this too would be something like a seven-starter lineup, with Lou Williams filling out the PG/SG backup and Mike Miller playing backup SG/SF, with Speights and Evans coming in as backup bigs to Young and Brand.

As for long-term plans for Gordon and Mike Miller,  Gordon’s contract expires at the end of this year, which is fine, because Mike Miller and Lou Williams (along with passable 3rd-stringer Royal Ivey) would be there for the minutes if the 76ers didn’t want to give Gordon a new contract.  At the very least, Gordon would get to showcase with full starter minutes on a team that desperately needs 3-point shooting, improve a team to (hopefully) get it into the playoffs, and probably improves his chances of getting paid somewhere else in the process.

If Gordon demands a longer-term contract before agreeing to the trade, I’d give it to him - I bet he’d accept a lot less than he was asking the Bulls for.  He knows by now that he’s not going to get mega-millions for being an undersized 2 anyway.  We have five players coming off the books this year, and with Andre Miller potentially leaving town this offseason, we may have some money to give Gordon a bit of a two-three year contract and a raise and still attract a point-guard-of-the-future (or trade Mike Miller for a pretty good one).

And in regard to Mike Miller, if the 76ers keep him for the last year of his contract (and jettison Gordon), that would give  the 76ers time to continue to work him into the core of players, as he’s a solid starting option at the 2.

With all of the teams I mentioned floundering, this is a way for some teams to save some money, ship off unwanted players, clear logjams, and put players at their proper positions, all while adding talent that complements their existing rosters and giving every team a little more hope for the future…but especially mine.

I am not going to offer any sort of real election coverage, as that would be presumptuous and pointless.  What I am going to offer are quotes and enjoyable bits of copy that I read or hear today, and will link to the source, when possible.

Douglas Hannan, 44, a property manager who was selling baked goods on the line to benefit the school, said “I’ve been here ten years, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a line at all. Sales are going amazing.”

“The pullout was greatly exaggerated,” began Caroline Adelman, Georgia Communications Director, Obama for America.

The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns’ ballots but got no votes.

It would engender, in addition to political chaos; a) four years of very, very hard feelings in this country: b) a steep loss of prestige for the United States in world public opinion; c) the demise of the Electoral College.

My friends, it’s time to turn the page. You betcha, literally.

McCain: You know, I didn’t learn a great deal, Chris, that I didn’t already know.

Berman: Senator, let’s bring it into our arena for a moment.

Colorado is a feisty state — you never know which way it’s going to go.

In Philadelphia, lines were equally long and at one polling place on in the east side of the city several voting machines were not working because there was no extension cord available to help them reach the electrical outlet.

There were also reports of underhanded tactics. Several callers from Indiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland reported receiving automated phone calls with incorrect polling locations. Dozens of people in Colorado and New Jersey reported not receiving confirmation of their voter registrations or absentee ballots.

 John McCain faces not so much of an uphill battle as a vertical ascent wearing two lead boots, one marked “Bush” and the other marked “Palin”.

Karl Rove, the man widely credited with engineering President Bush’s two successful White House bids, is predicting the Illinois senator will take the White House in an Electoral College landslide, winning 338 votes to John McCain’s 200.

Marian Goldberg said she was willing to “stay [there] as long as it takes.” Asked if her boss will be patient with her, she said, “I’m the boss. And I’m going to be patient.”

“Here in Alaska, where we’ve cleaned up the corruption and we’ve taken on some self-dealing and self-interests, we’ve been able to really put government back on the side of the people,” Palin told reporters after voting.

Soggy ballots.

The presidential candidate’s half-brother, Malik, tied a bull to a tree, then hobbled it, and asked me to hold the beast’s head to the ground as he drew a machete across its jugular….But for Malik, one lesson is already clear: Don’t buy a cow on the day your half-brother is expected to be elected President of the United States.

And be nice to the person who gives you an “I Voted” sticker. That person has been up since dawn defending your democracy against the forces of chaos.

When the two-term Republican President has a 20% approval rating and Americans prefer the Democrats’ solution to just about every national problem, Americans just aren’t going to elect another Republican President — especially when the Democratic nominee has raised the most money in the history of money.

“I have the time and luxury to do this,” he said of his four-hour ordeal to vote. “If this is a systemic thing, what does that mean for the country?”

Perhaps the most amusing report came from the suburban town of Brookhaven, in Delaware County, where Committee representatives heard complaints about snakes in the building, and structural problems including a collapsed ceiling and broken lights.

This story strikes me as lazy thinking and as non-news.  It’s an article in Time magazine that says that Obama is ice and McCain is fire; the Dem is dispassionate and clinical and the GOPher is an emotional volcano.

This just seems to be untrue, doesn’t it? Obama seems to very much understand and feel the pain of his fellow citizens, and his manner is of a cool and levelheaded mentor - like a teacher or camp counselor who cared very much about your problem but knew that it wouldn’t help for him to panic too.

And the idea that McCain is totally out of control of his emotions seems to be extremely implausible - you can’t have been in the Senate for more than a quarter century and not be able to keep your thoughts and feelings in check.  I have no doubt that his “irritability” or other cantankerous tendencies serve more as tools to dismiss Obama as a whippersnapper; I just can’t fathom that the man has been in public office this long and wouldn’t know exactly how his actions affect his public image.

This article seems to me to be just another stupid dialectic that some news outlet has decided to run with, because they want to make it a this-vs-that election, and because red-vs-blue is so 2004, they’ve decided on the elemental (and not very subtle) stand-in of fire vs ice.

Let’s check our collective common sense for a moment - does anybody actually believe that if there were some sort of terrorist threat that Obama wouldn’t react with passion and decisiveness? And does anybody actually believe that McCain is so impetuous that he’s going to declare war on Iran simply because somebody sneers at him funny?

I don’t mean to single out Time.  This bit of idiocy is a journalistic device that nearly all the outlets are using. There is a great Obama profile that I feel helps me understand him much better in New York Times Magazine, which shows a nuanced, energetic, interested, concerned, fallible, human candidate.  I’m sure one is out there about McCain (anybody know of one?), but most news organizations aren’t interested in running with that angle.

They’d rather he be a cocked gun, a red-hot poker, about to erupt at any moment and take any sense of subtlety or humanity with him.

“President Bush gave a speech today about the economy and he said that he believes that ‘anyone who makes bad decisions should fail.’ Then Bush looked around the room and said, ‘Hey, why did it get so quiet in here?’”

- Conan O’Brien

Although the punchline is made-up, I still think the real quote is pretty good example of irony.

Do you remember those smear campaigns from 2004 and 2000, respectively?  One said that John Kerry was (among other things) a bloodthirsty murderer of innocent Vietnamese, and the other said that, because John McCain spent so much time in a Vietnamese prison camp, that he had obviously been brainwashed.  We have a new one: Sarah Palin is asserting that Barack Obama hangs out with terrorists.

If you have already clicked the above link, you know the accusation is misinformed and spurious at best, and a straight-up despicable lie at worst.

I thought this type of tactic (which is part of a larger strategy, so that nobody accuses me of not knowing the difference between he two) was best left to Arthur Miller plays, but I guess various political strategists think that, because this type of cynical witchhunt worked in 2000 during the Republican primaries and in 2004 during the Presidential Election, that surely it will work this year.

The strange thing is I’m not convinced it won’t.

I get the feeling that people are looking for any reason to vote for whom they’d like to vote for, even if that candidate will not be in their personal, economic, or philosophical interests.  Facts don’t matter anymore, only opinion does.  I want what I want, irrespective of reason or justification.

So if you believe someone is a terrorist, you’re right, because that’s your opinion, and nobody can take that away from you (because we live in an era where things that can be substantively be proven as true or untrue are nevertheless easily dismissed under the misnomer of “opinion”).  If reality is purely a construct within your own head, then reality is whatever you imagine it to be.

Back during the 2004 Presidential campaigns, I remember talking with a friend of mine about how bad things might get, and one of us mentioned that the worst-case scenario would be if either candidate was assassinated.  The polarizing effects and witch-hunt mob mentality that would result would be horrifying.

Basically, as much as either character (Bush or Kerry) drew people to opposite corners, they still somehow served as floodgates or perhaps they might better be described as targets, receiving the bulk of adulation and the bulk of the scorn, so that people could have the debates, the arguments, with their newspaper or television, and not their neighbors or family members.

So, as wary as I am of a potential McCain presidency, he certainly serves as a powerful symbol and, yes, a very big target.  I do think he’s strong enough to handle the criticism and disagreement that may come his way if he is elected president.  Same thing with Obama and his running-mate, Biden.  I think all three of those candidates would be able to stand up to the withering criticism and partisan backbiting that will undoubtedly take place before, during, and after their potential administrations.  However, imagine my horror when I learned of the (strong) possibility of a Palin presidency:

I know one thing: this is no time for further gambling. John McCain rolled the dice on Sarah Palin. I’m grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the election is about 1 in 6 or 7.

That’s the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport. Is America ready for that?

1 in 6 odds.  That’s Russian roulette.  That’s a roll of the dice.  That’s being selected for a jury (incidentally, I’m waiting around at jury duty right now).  In other words, it’s a very possible scenario.  So we must consider it. And as I consider it, I feel the likelihood of an extremely unpleasant outcome (we’re only a melanoma away) is too high, the distastefulness of the result too grim, to accept.

I’m not sure I have the confidence that Palin is capable of serving as the resilient human bulls-eye that I describe above - her recent interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, illustrate to me that she is not capable of thinking on her feet, of demonstrating a basic understanding of the Constitution or of American history, of making salient points, of keeping her composure under examination, or even sometimes of producing coherent sentences.

There’s a basic security knowing that your president is who he is, for better and, in the case of my views of our current president, for worse.  No matter what you think of this person, you hope that he (or she) will not wilt under the hot lights of international superstardom and a level of scrutiny that no other person in the world will have to endure.  As often as I profoundly disagreed with President Bush, I felt weirdly secure in the knowledge that he would do the exact opposite of what I would do nearly every time, but that he would do it with unshakeable, near-insane confidence.  He isn’t much of a panicker.  He has a quiet, semi-inexplicable calm, even when things are going terribly wrong (see: My Pet Goat).  My impression of Palin is that she is more prone to hyperventilate and cry than any of the other three candidates currently running for prez and backup prez.

This comment may come off as being extremely sexist. I can assure you it is not. Hillary Clinton has nerves of tempered steel and Condoleeza Rice has been under fire for eight years and has shown no signs of relent. In fact, I even wondered during the insanity of 2004 if an Oprah presidency would be such a bad thing (at least she’d be encouraging people to read).  No, my reservations regarding Governor Palin are focused entirely on her personality and character, and would be the same if she were of a different gender.

In the end, 75% of the people comprising the two tickets that are currently running for president/vice-president are ultimately people that I would not be abjectly frightened to see lead this nation.  The three people I’m talking about are obvious.

The remaining quarter, however…I’m not sure if America’s ready, but I’m certainly not.

This is something that somebody actually said, and it wasn’t during the Miss America Pageant: 

“Helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade — we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today — we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity.”

Debate on Thursday.